


What They Know

by merriman



Category: Koko wa Greenwood | Here is Greenwood
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Ghosts, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 14:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16996767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Shinobu and Mitsuru have a very small apartment. Is it enough? Can it fit one more if that one more is incorporeal?





	What They Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [acchikocchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/acchikocchi/gifts).



> Please forgive my lack of knowledge of just how big their apartment might be, given their budget and the time in which the canon is set. They do mention it would have to be small.
> 
> ETA post reveals: Thank you very much to Prinzenhasserin for betaing and reassurance.

It was a small apartment. Neither Mitsuru nor Shinobu had been under any delusions that their apartment was anything other than very small. It was big enough for the two of them, of course. They'd shared a single dorm room for three years, so a small apartment wasn't going to be a problem. When they'd first moved in it had been almost comical how much their belongings spread out. It was bigger than they'd expected to be able to afford, which had been a little concerning. They'd both spent the first month expecting to find out that the place was cursed, or worse, that the plumbing was broken. But still. There was no mistaking that it was indeed small, especially with all their guests currently making it feel even smaller than usual.

"Are we over capacity?" Mitsuru asked Shinobu as two more of their friends came through the door. They already had at least fifteen people over to celebrate the new apartment. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and they'd bought plenty of food and drink. Pretty soon, however, they would have to stack guests on top of each other if anyone else arrived.

"Furusawa isn't here yet," Shinobu said. "So we should be okay unless he brings his bike."

"Right," Mitsuru agreed. 

Shinobu was about to shut the door, when he heard Shun's voice call out, telling someone else to catch up. That would be two more, then, at least. He glanced back over his shoulder at the crowd of people already there. They'd invited their friends from school, and not a few of them had girlfriends now. It made for a lively group gathered in their living room, and yet Shinobu wasn't really in the mood for guests. But what did one's mood matter when one had obligations? Even if they were self-imposed obligations such as a house-warming party. And besides, Mitsuru was in the thick of it, already in among their guests, teasing Hasukawa about something or other.

Throughout the evening whenever Shinobu thought the last of their guests had arrived, it seemed that someone would have to leave and someone else would arrive to take their place. Faces he had never seen before accompanied people he was mostly familiar with through Mitsuru and his own notes on various people who might be useful at some point in the future. 

At one point Shinobu thought he saw an entirely unfamiliar face pass by the kitchen as he was getting a drink, but then Mitsuru had answered the door several times. It was somewhat unpleasant to have people he hadn't even met in passing in his home, but Shinobu had long since learned to put unpleasantness aside. This little party would serve to keep himself and Mitsuru in the minds of their former schoolmates, which would make it that much easier to call upon them if the need arose.

Shinobu took his drink out into the living room and found a seat by the window where he could watch Mitsuru and their guests without needing to say much himself. Mitsuru was better at this sort of thing. He'd be well able to keep the party going for another few hours.

* * *

It was late in the evening by the time the party started to wind down. Shinobu had kept his seat by the window even as their guests had taken their leave by ones and twos. He had expected that as those they didn't know as well left, he would feel more and more at ease, but something was still amiss. Perhaps it was that the apartment was untidy now, full of empty cans and wrappers, the cushions strewn about and the furniture all moved around to make space for the somewhat bewildering number of people who had come.

Around when Furusawa and Yoko left and their remaining guests were finishing up a game of cards in the corner of the living room, Shinobu stood and started to clean. They still had people in the living room and Mitsuru was chatting with two old friends from his junior high in there too, so Shinobu left them to that and moved on to the kitchen. When he had finished in there, he went to check the bedroom. Just because they had marked it as off-limits to their guests, that didn't mean everyone had respected their wishes. After all, some of their guests didn't really know Shinobu well enough to know better.

There hadn't been much of a debate when it came to bedrooms. Mitsuru had proposed that a single bedroom apartment was cheaper and since they were so used to sharing, they could continue for a little longer. Shinobu had considered attempting to argue for two bedrooms mostly for the sake of making Mitsuru work for it, but in the end he hadn't been able to come up with a convincing line beyond the possibility of one of them dating someone. And they both knew full well that wasn't likely to be a problem, even if they'd never flat out discussed it.

Shinobu opened the bedroom door and peeked inside. All appeared to be in order except for his slippers, which he knew he had left by the door and which were now tucked under his bed. Curious. He went over to check them and take a closer look at the rest of the room. Upon inspection, he noticed that a book Mitsuru had left on his bed was now closed, with a bookmark Shinobu didn't recognize. One of Mitsuru's shirts had been laid across his bed and was now folded on top of a stack of laundry. A glass of water Shinobu had left on his nightstand was empty, though he was certain it had not been when he'd left the room earlier before the party.

The sound of the front door closing caught Shinobu's attention. Leaving the oddly altered bedroom, he went back out to the living room to see Mitsuru locking up. 

"Is that everyone?" he asked. 

Mitsuru nodded and leaned his head against the door. "No more parties for at least a week," he muttered. "How did we live in a dorm for three years!"

Shinobu didn't laugh, but he did smile and walk over to put a hand on Mitsuru's shoulder. "Come on. Let's fix the living room, old man."

Mitsuru sighed and straightened up. "Fine, but for making me be the host you should be the one moving the furniture!"

Shinobu couldn't quite bring himself to argue with that. "I cleaned the kitchen already," he pointed out instead, then stopped when he turned towards the living room only to see that someone was still seated there, in the chair Shinobu had been in earlier, looking out the window.

"Hey, friend, sorry, but it's time to go!" Mitsuru called out. "We need to clean up!"

The man in the chair didn't turn around and Shinobu frowned as that unsettled feeling he'd had before returned. He stopped Mitsuru when he would have stepped forward.

"No," Shinobu said softly. "Let me."

He walked over, putting himself between Mitusuru and whoever this mysterious man was. As he got closer, he recognized the face as the one he'd seen a few times through the night. The one he hadn't recognized. It made sense, of course. The apartment had been so cheap because it was haunted.

"Who did you come with?" he demanded. "If you are haunting someone, you had best leave with them."

"A ghost?" Mitsuru whispered from behind him. "Our party was haunted?"

The young man now turned to look at them. He stood and Shinobu saw that his feet weren't quite all there, fading into nothing by the soles of his shoes. 

"I will not be leaving," he told them, bowing his head. "I came here with the two of you."

* * *

The ghost introduced himself as Naoto, a former Ryokuto student who had died in an accident years and years ago before he had graduated.

"I died at home," he told Shinobu and Mitsuru as they fixed up the living room. "But when I became a ghost, I found myself in the dorm. I guess it was because I liked it there so much. All my friends were there. They had a memorial for me, but I couldn't go because I couldn't leave Greenwood. It's been very nice staying there over the years. It was almost as if I was still a student there."

"So how are you here now?" Shinobu asked. He had a suspicion, but he was curious as to whether Naoto had any idea himself.

"I've been thinking about that," Naoto said after a moment of thought, or just hesitation. "You see, 211 was my room. After I died, my former roommate lived alone and I stayed there. I didn't want to bother him, so I never showed him I was there, but I think perhaps he knew. When he graduated, the last thing he did before he left the room was to say goodbye to me. I went all over the dorm. Most of us ghosts who live there go everywhere in the building, but I always went back to 211. Once the boys living there didn't speak to each other beyond their introduction all three years running. Can you even imagine it? I spent more time around the dorm then. But you two, you were the most interesting. You reminded me so much of my old friends. I think maybe, some time in the past three years, I stopped haunting the dorm and I started haunting you."

Mitsuru was nodding along, grinning with pride when Naoto had said that he and Shinobu were interesting, but then stopped when he got to the end. He looked over to Shinobu.

"Wouldn't you have noticed?" he asked.

Shinobu shrugged. "Perhaps not. Greenwood has so many ghosts, what's one more in our room all the time if he never causes any trouble?"

"Oh, you two made plenty of trouble without me!" Naoto said, laughing. "But now, here I am. I do hope I'm not disturbing you?"

Shinobu got up to get himself another drink. When he returned he took a seat and regarded their guest. "I will admit, I was wondering what was going on. Did you move things in the bedroom?"

Naoto had the grace to look slightly abashed at that, but he also nodded. "I was just trying to tidy up. I can't move much - I am a ghost, after all - but little things, your things, I've found, sometimes I can."

"And is that why we got such a good deal on this place?" Mitsuru asked.

Naoto shook his head. "Oh, no. That was the ghost who was here before me. But I convinced it to leave."

They sat there, all three of them, for a few moments. Shinobu wasn't entirely certain what Mitsuru was thinking, though he was likely going through all the other experiences they'd had with ghosts in the past. He truly had no idea what Naoto was thinking. The thought process of ghosts, even ghosts of former Ryokuto students and Greenwood residents, could be somewhat inscrutable. For his own part, Shinobu was trying to decide if it would be worth trying to force Naoto to go, or if they could convince him to go back to Greenwood and perhaps haunt Hasukawa and Shun for the remainder of their last year there. 

"So you spent three years around us, then followed us out of the dorm?" Mitsuru asked. "I'm pretty flattered, you know."

Trust Mitsuru to take attention from a ghost as a compliment. Though really, Naoto had to be the most polite ghost Shinobu had ever encountered.

"Were you planning on staying here with us?" Shinobu asked. "It's a very small apartment."

"I noticed," Naoto said. "Much smaller than the whole dorm. But I don't take up any room, really! I don't need a bed, and I won't eat your food. I promise, I won't get in the way. It's just that I've come to think of you both as friends. My roommates."

Shinobu glanced at Mitsuru, then out the window. "Naoto, if we go into the other room to discuss this in private, will you promise us that you will not listen in?"

The ghost gave them a quick, decisive nod. "I promise. If you cannot trust me, I would not expect you to allow me to stay."

"Hmm." Shinobu stood up and motioned for Mitsuru to join him in the bedroom. 

Once the door was closed and Shinobu was as certain as he could be that Naoto was not in the room with them, he pointed out all the things Naoto had done around the room.

"Looks like he's trying to be helpful," Mitsuru said, taking the bookmark out of his book and looking it over. "I wonder where this came from?"

"Helpful or not, he is a ghost," Shinobu said.

"True. And do we really want a ghost living with us from now on?"

"He's been living with us for three years already."

They both paused to consider that. Three years without this particular ghost being a problem. But what might happen if they allowed it and then he became a problem? For that matter, what if they asked him to go and he refused? 

"What do you think we should do?" Mitsuru asked. He looked at Shinobu with complete trust that Shinobu would have the right answer and it was all Shinobu could do not to throw his hands up and declare he had no idea. But he'd always either had an answer for Mitsuru or he'd had a good reason for abstaining. He wasn't about to let him down now.

"I think we should let him stay, provisionally," Shinobu said. "If he becomes a problem, we find a way to get him to move on, or go back to the dorm."

"Right!" Mitsuru grinned and shoved Shinobu through the door, back out into the living room.

"Have you made a decision?" Naoto asked them. 

Shinobu would have hung back, but Mitsuru shoved him forward a bit. He glanced back at Mitsuru to glare at him, but three years of living together had given Mitsuru at least a little bit of immunity from that. Fine.

"First, what would you do if we move apart?" Shinobu asked. He hadn't planned on asking, not out loud, not right then and there, but it left his mouth before he could stop himself. It was a reasonable question. They could part ways any time. Mitsuru could decide to move home and take over the running of the temple. Shinobu's family could call on him, even with Akira home, and what if he found he couldn't refuse them? There were so many ways that they could end up apart, as if the past three years had never happened.

Behind him, he head Mitsuru mutter something but he couldn't quite make it out. In front of him, Naoto was shaking his head.

"You won't," he told them. "I'm not worried about that."

Shinobu didn't dare turn to look at Mitsuru now. "And you won't interrupt us if we're… busy?"

Naoto shook his head. "I never have before, have I?"

Well. He had a point there. If he'd had a problem with the two of them, surely he wouldn't have followed them from the dorm. Or he might have, but he would have caused them more problems.

"Just consider me your alarm system," Naoto told them. "If anything needs your attention, I will let you know. If not, I will simply be around until I am ready to go."

* * *

Shinobu woke late in the night only to realize it was almost dawn. He sat up in bed and stared at the wall where the tree outside their bedroom window cast a shadow. A breeze was blowing and the motion of the tree moving in the wind was soothing to watch. Somewhere in the apartment - though not in the bedroom as far as Shinobu could tell - there was a ghost. A very well-mannered ghost who apparently considered Shinobu and Mitsuru his friends.

Shinobu supposed he'd had stranger experiences in his life. He drew his knees up a bit and rested his hands on them. The ghost had said that Mitsuru wasn't going to leave. And neither was he. What did a ghost know about that? On the other hand, what didn't a ghost know? Shinobu had only heard from his family once since he and Mitsuru had moved into the apartment and they hadn't said anything about him coming home. They had at least until they were done with University. That much he hoped.

"You're thinking too hard," Mitsuru mumbled into his pillow. "I can almost hear it. Stop thinking and go back to sleep."

Shinobu looked down at Mitsuru, legs tangled in the blankets beside him. "It's almost dawn anyhow," he said as he straightened the blankets and laid back down under them.

"Who cares?" Mitsuru said, turning to face him and yank the covers back. "We're not in the dorm. Classes haven't started yet. We can sleep in if we want. Unless the ghost wakes us up."

Shinobu pulled the covers over again and pressed in close to Mitsuru. The ghost wouldn't wake them. He was far too polite for that. Mitsuru was right - they had plenty of time now.


End file.
